WDR advice. It's being a wonderful/terrible thing

[Jaceon]

So I recently installed 7 hikvision 4mp DS-2CD2145F-IS cameras running at 1080/10FPS with WDR on @70 (all other camera settings still stock).
They have some dark hallways with LED "always on" fixtures at the doors. To fix this I use wdr and it really brightens the dark areas. However..... WDR makes the LED light IMAGE flicker something terrible, which blue iris seems to pick up as motion pretty easy. So two questions I have.

1. Is there any camera settings to help the flicker? If I shut WDR off the flicker is gone but then I can't see because of the light coming through the windows during the day, and the led fixtures washing everything out at night.

2. With WDR on, any motion looks pretty grainy.

Curious if there's any other camera settings I'm missing that could help these, or maybe it's just a one or the other kind of thing.

Thanks Jace

 

[hmjgriffon]

So I recently installed 7 hikvision 4mp DS-2CD2145F-IS cameras running at 1080/10FPS with WDR on @70 (all other camera settings still stock).
They have some dark hallways with LED "always on" fixtures at the doors. To fix this I use wdr and it really brightens the dark areas. However..... WDR makes the LED lights flicker something terrible, which blue iris seems to pick up as motion pretty easy. So two questions I have.

1. Is there any camera settings to help the flicker? If I shut WDR off the flicker is gone but then I can't see because of the light coming through the windows during the day, and the led fixtures washing everything out at night.

2. With WDR on, any motion looks pretty grainy.

Curious if there's any other camera settings I'm missing that could help these, or maybe it's just a one or the other kind of thing.

Thanks Jace

You can just mask out the lights so motion detection doesn't consider it.

You could try upping the gain to see if it helps the graininess.

 

[Jaceon]

Will try. I guess the graininess isn't too bad most the time. For sure the flickering is the worst. I have masked out a lot of the flickering but the problem is it's pretty much the entire entrance that is flickering (doors/floors/etc) so can't really mask it all and still be effective. The flickering can be quite severe, and something I have not dealt with on other projects. I've had to tone down my motion detection sensitivity more than I'd like just so I don't have constant recording.
I tried putting wdr on "auto" as during the day most cameras are alright, but it seems that on "auto" wdr is still always on in my scenario I guess. I don't think there's anyway to have wdr turn on and off via a schedule either.
Thanks for the thoughts

 

[nayr]

run a fixed exposure setting that dont collide with your lighting's frequency... or see if you have an anti-flicker setting.

 

[alastairstevenson]

However..... WDR makes the LED lights flicker something terrible

Does the camera web GUI have a configuration option for NTSC (60Hz) / PAL (50Hz) to match the mains frequency of the LED power?

 

[Jaceon]

Just making sure we're on the same page. The light created by the LED lights is flickering in the video image not the actual physical lights. But anyways. I messed with exposure settings, and made one camera always on "night mode" right now and it's slightly better but definitely not ideal. But unfortunately I don't see any "anti-flicker" or NTSC/PAL options. I can't even have WDR turned on in there gym though since they are all LED's. The image just looks like a crazy light show, so they'll have to live with dark areas when the lights off I guess. I guess picking the best of the two evils is as good as it gets maybe?
Thanks for the thoughts!

 

[nayr]

LED lights typically operate at frequencies that have no correlation to 60Hz/50Hz, the flickering is happening because of your shutter speed.. if your using auto-shutter then disable it and try manual settings

 

[alastairstevenson]

The light created by the LED lights is flickering in the video image not the actual physical lights.

LED lights do flicker / vary in brightness with the frequency of the mains supply they are connected to, as do incandescent lights.
Sure, the switch-mode power supply operates at 10s of kHz but the DC output droops and rises somewhat with the mains voltage that its supplied with.

 

[Jaceon]

I have no idea what WDR does to a picture that the LED's throw such a fit but after playing with all the settings here's what I have working. Not "ideal" but much better than where it was.
The iris only had a "manual" setting and by default it's 1/25. Pretty much every shutter speed is crap all the way up to 1/100,000 except for 1/150 randomly. It still flickers but it's much better than the others. The only problem this seems to have created is darkening the picture some, so I turned WDR all the way up to 100 and I think I can live with that. I still have to mask out some of the floor/walls/ceiling but then I've been able to turn my sensitivity back up. Haven't tested motion yet, but will when kids get to school later.
I have ran these cameras off 24v before and I think they can run off 48v PoE. You think that could make any difference?
Thanks Jace